Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I welcome the fact that an appointments system has been put in place in some offices and I am glad that the Minister took on our suggestion. This should have happened earlier. I accept that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of people applying and that has put serious pressure on the system but the Minister has failed to gear up the Department to deal adequately with that. While we understand that this is a new situation and there are considerable pressures, that is no excuse for people who depend on the Department in order to survive. A total of 28 social welfare offices have waiting times of more than two months. By any standard, that is completely unacceptable.

Last month during Question Time I asked the Minister about the particular problem affecting the branch offices. The Minister seemed to deny it, telling us it was all in hand and that she was dealing with it. She is not dealing with it. There are serious problems and she has not given us any grounds to expect that the issue will be dealt with soon. To what extent has she attempted to quantify the problem? How many staff does she believe are required now? Are all of the 115 extra staff all in place? How many additional staff does she believe are required to bring the waiting times down to an acceptable limit?

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